A STUDY OF THE METABOLISM OF CRYSTALLINE PROGESTERONE

IN 1938 (1) a preliminary report was made on a study of the metabolism of in-II jected crystalline progesterone, which definitely established sodium pregnandiol glucuronidate as an end product in the metabolism of this compound in the hu-man organism. These experiments have been elaborated and are now being reported in detail. Since this work was published Stover and Pratt (2) reported failure to demon-strate any sodium pregnandiol glucuronidate in the urine of women following injec- tions of 15 and17.5 Rb. u. of progestin (Parke, Davis). Also Hamblen and coworkers (3, 4) reported that in their studies on progesterone utilization in patients with func-tional irregularities of uterine bleeding no evidence was encountered that crystallineprogesterone was metabolized into sodium pregnandiol glucuronidate. From endome-trial studies they also conclude that progesterone is inefficiently utilized in these cases. Recently